colors
by renegadesWrath
Summary: Dave's thoughts in the alternate where they are back to their selves before the game, but retain all memories.
It's hard.

It's hard being like this, and nobody understands.

Look, I never asked to be some god. I never asked for this. That stupid game just thrusted this in my face saying, "Hey asshole, here take this thing you never asked for." and ran away.

After it ended, we were transported back into our 13-year-old selves before the game destroyed everything. It's fucking disorienting. I know I'm supposed to be a god of time of whatever but after fighting not one, but two goddamn chess guys, who are the same people except one of him has freaky puppet/cherub's powers and the other is just straight-up merciless, then being shoved back to a time before any of this even happened, therefore nullifying that reality but you know it happened because it did and you have the memories to prove it, is pretty fucked up.

Then the psychological effects of the game started taking its toll and of course you don't get to keep the cool god powers you literally died earning it's okay it's not like they'd be useful here too or anything, and waking up screaming because the nightmare you had was about another version of you dying and it felt so fucking real-.

I'm sorry. I'm getting off tangent.

Anyway, soon Bro decided it was best if I went and "saw someone" about it. Of course, they thought I was hiveshit maggots and gave me a bunch of pills I had to remember to take.

It's been six years since the game ended, and I've realized that I am never going to get over it. I've stopped trying. Now I live in an apartment in Queens, and am now an artist. Of course, I still DJ. This universe can't go on without these sick Strider beats.

Art is not what I create. What I create, is chaos.

I'm still in contact with John, Rose and Jade, but no matter how much I try to bring the game up they always change the subject. So I've resorted to finding temporary peace in relationships with complete strangers, and destroying them. They leave because I overreacted to something trivial, or the nightmares have become too much to handle.

Oh yeah. It's not like the nightmares being real was ever a thing that stopped being true.

Then, I take the chaos I created and reflect them in my art. I've sold some pieces that were enough to keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

I guess it's tragic, but then again it's me. Maybe it's some sort of psychological thing where I'm punishing myself for all the people who died in the game because naturally everything is my fault.

They don't get to fucking tell me I'm crazy. One person's real is never the same as another person's real. Nobody lives the same goddamn existence as everybody else. They can't tell me I'm insane if they haven't a fucking clue what I've gone through.

All those deaths were real. They're real, and so are the million dead Daves, and I have to experience and remember them over and over and over again.

I have to remember watching all of my friends die in every. single. timeline. All of them being sucked into a black hole, or as I like to call it, 'Aradia's vacuum cleaner', screaming as they're ripped into shreds by its event horizon. I know that the other them is in a way conscious and seemingly alive, but when you're being ripped apart simultaneously it's kinda hard to think about anything else. The other you is wandering around in the dreambubbles, sometimes not even aware they're dead until something triggers their memory and they get those haunting blank eyes that just scream 'I'm dead!'. Sometimes even then they're so deep in denial that they pretend not to notice, or manage to completely wipe that from their memory.

The screaming, though. You can never get over the screams everyone you love make when they're being burnt to oblivion.

Nor can you forget seeing your brother die twice, and according to him it "isn't the first time I've been decapitated, it's cool".

More often than not the nightmares trigger intense panic attacks that I have to talk myself through.

I guess I create chaos because I've seen too much of it to be able to go without.

Sick, isn't it?

Sometimes it's me killing them. When I talk to them, I always feel like they're harboring some resentment towards me for killing them, but I think only Time players can remember all the timelines they've existed in. This just makes me feel worse considering I've basically murdered my friends multiple times.

I think it's a little cathartic. Expressing the chaos I've experienced in a form that people can see and interpret, no matter how abstract. Everyone has their own version of chaos.

When I look at the paintings I've created, I feel like all the blood that's been shed covers me from head to toe, and they're never coming off. I'll never be clean, and that's what I deserve. I deserve to have to live with all the psychological ramifications of the game.

Doesn't make it any easier to live with.


End file.
